Wind Sun Soil Spirit: Biblical Ethics and Climate Change

WIND, SUN, SOIL, SPIRIT

WIND, SUN, SOIL, SPIRIT

Biblical Ethics and Climate Change

CAROL S. ROBB

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

WIND, SUN, SOIL, SPIRIT

Biblical Ethics and Climate Change

Copyright © 2010 Fortress Press, an imprint of Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights rserved.

Cover image: Olive Orchard, Violet Soil, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890 Dutch), Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands / Veer

Cover design: Laurie Ingram

Book design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN

eISBN 978-1-4514-0490-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robb, Carol S.

Wind, sun, soil, spirit : biblical ethics and climate change / Carol S. Robb.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8006-9706-8 (alk. paper)

1. Global warming—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Environmental ethics. 3. Ethics in the Bible. 4. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BR115.G58R63 2010

220.8’36373874—dc22

2009036767

CONTENTS

Preface

Part One

Climate Change Policies: These Are Moral Matters

Chapter 1: Climate Change and Climate Treaties: The Context for Deliberation

Introduction

Climate Change Protocol

Flexibility Mechanisms the Treaty Allows for Meeting Obligations

Chapter 2: Moral Dimensions of Climate Change: Four Formulations

The Consequences of Not Curtailing Emissions Will Be Catastrophic

It Is Not Obvious That Choosing 1990 as the Base Year for Assigning Emission Allowances Is Fair

Forward Movement Is Possible Only When Nations Stop Jockeying over Responsibility

Moral Responsibility Is Relevant for Achieving Justice

Summary

Chapter 3: Choosing Our Future: A Fifth Formulation

Which Future Should We Value?

Sorting through the Scenarios

Part Two

Reading the Bible and Doing Ethics

Chapter 4: The Bible and Ecological Ethics

The Scope of the Project of Social Ethics

Using Scripture in Ethics

The Approach of This Project

Chapter 5: Jesus, Torah, and Temple

Jesus Was from Galilee

Galilee and Judea Had Different Histories

The Second Temple Was Associated with Herod

The Legitimacy of the High Priest Was Tainted

Jesus Challenged the Temple as the Site of Purification

Jesus Recommended to Peasants an Alternative Way to Discharge Their Temple Debts

Jesus Emphasized the Debt Code over the Purity Code

Chapter 6: The Reign of God: Alternative to Empire

Chapter 7: Paul’s Challenge to Caesar

Paul’s Focus on the Cross of Christ Is Intrinsically Political

Paul Challenged the Emperor by Organizing Ekklēsiai as an Alternative to Roman Rule

Paul’s Missionary Efforts Were Necessary in His Eyes to Bring to Fulfillment the Restoration Envisioned in Isaiah 11:10 and Psalm 117:1

Paul’s Missionary Efforts Were Authorized by the Delivery of the Collection

Paul Challenged the Patronage System

How Can Paul’s Relationships to the Ekklēsiai be Alternatives to the Roman Empire in Light of His Efforts to Limit the Influence of Women?

How Can Paul Challenge the Political Authority of the Lord and Savior Caesar While Establishing His Own Position in an Alternative Hierarchical Order?

Paul Had Little Concern to Effect System Change in the City-States Where the Israelites Were Living

Part Three

Biblical Social Ethics and the Kingdom of Oil

Chapter 8: The Atmospheric Global Commons

The Reign of God Requires Healthy Communities in Healthy Ecosystems

An Alternative to the Kingdom of Oil

Community Wind, Community Sun, Community of the Soil, Enlivened Communities

Notes

Index

PREFACE

As the new millennium was breaking in, Christopher Lind, then of St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, called to invite me to resource a consultation on climate change organized by the World Council of Churches’ Climate Change Program. I was eager—and unprepared. I knew something about the phenomena associated with global climate change because Bill Somplatsky-Jarman had been doing education on the topic for the Presbyterian Church USA and the National Council of Churches for more than fifteen years. David Hallman, the coordinator of the Climate Change Program, channeled background material my way. My challenge was to contribute a theological-ethical perspective to representatives of the WCC who would be observers at the then upcoming Sixth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change at The Hague, November 2000.

To the Saskatoon Consultation I delivered this message: though the people of the Mediterranean world knew nothing about climate change as far as we know, the Bible, in this case the New Testament texts, are surprisingly relevant to our debate over climate change policies. This book is an amplification of that initial message.

The questions that ground the development of this book are these:

How are people of the world talking about decreasing the greenhouse gas emissions affecting global climate? I’ll address this question by describing the Kyoto Treaty and its flexibility mechanisms. The Kyoto Treaty governs emissions of its signatories through 2012. While the United States is not a signatory of Kyoto, the current administration and legislative branches are exhibiting genuine openness to engaging debate over the next treaty. So hope is in the air. And the issues that fed into Kyoto are going to be with us in the next treaties, so we had better understand them so we can help shape them.

How do people of good will identify the moral issues triggered by policy debate and design? What makes a climate change policy right or wrong? I will show you why and how every mode of moral discourse ethicists typically use to answer this question has to be employed to get at the moral meaning of the policy debates.

Of what significance to climate policies might it be that a people considers itself Christian? The choices of climate policies being considered and made at this historical juncture are likely to affect the meaning of human life and the complexity of ecologies for decades and centuries. The climatologists employed by the United Nations do not want the responsibility of making these decisions, and good for them! The possible futures depicted by the different paths we can choose are quite different. Shouldn’t this discussion be as wide as we can possibly make it? Yes.

How does a religious tradition, in this case Christian, relate its particular sources, in this case the Bible with a focus on the New Testament, to a public discussion over matters that affect the whole globe? Humbly, and with as much knowledge as we can muster about the historical context the different texts emerged from and addressed. And in that historical context, it helps to identify the sociological, biological, cultural, economic, and political dynamics at play, since ecological debates are rooted in all these dynamics.

Specifically, what is the relevance of Jesus of Nazareth to climate change? Because his own audiences were largely people working the land, Jesus’ hearers were quite attuned to the political and economic consequences on ecology of land ownership patterns and farm-worker labor practices. This is the level at which climate policies connect to the first-century Mediterranean world.

What is the relevance of Paul to climate change? Open question. Exciting work on Paul flowing forth during the last two decades presents a still inchoate picture of this person and his mission viewed sociologically. Nevertheless, I will formulate some questions to bring to Paul’s letters, hoping to contribute to further work on his possible relevance to contemporary policy discussions.

Do the New Testament texts sharpen contemporary readers’ eyes to issues very connected to climate policies? I will answer yes, if we can use sociology, cultural studies, and economic and political history to inform our reading of the texts. Then we will better be able to find analogies, or lack of them, with the contemporary world.

Should it matter to contemporary Christians what ancient texts say? It just does matter, whether it should or not. But I have discovered that Christian ethicists seem perennially vexed by how to responsibly use Scriptures as a source of authority. Biblical scholars on the other hand seem to be much freer to engage texts, argue with them, analyze them, and sometimes set them aside—all the more reason I would like Christian ethicists and biblical scholars to be more often cooperatively engaged in projects for the common good.

In that light, I want to acknowledge my colleagues in Biblical Studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary, the Graduate Theological Union, and the University of Massachusetts—Boston, but particularly Antoinette Clark Wire, Marvin Chaney, Bob Coote, Herman Waetjen, and Richard Horsley, whose work explicitly or implicitly graces these pages, or who urged me to just interpret the Bible the way I want, a sweet but futile benediction. Others offered gifts of a different nature. Eleanor Scott Meyers painted the muse who guided my writing. Arthur Holder, dean of the GTU, Marilyn Matevia, and the faculty and trustees of SFTS played important roles supporting the generation of this book. Michael West of Fortress Press must be thanked for his light but clear direction, as well as Maurya Horgan, who copyedited the manuscript, and Marissa Wold, who shepherded the project. I want also to acknowledge David Robb for showing me the wind turbines, and Duncan Mayer Robb, whose generation will be inheriting the earth, and whose future I pondered as I wrote nearly every page.

PART ONE

Climate Change Policies:

These Are Moral Matters

CHAPTER ONE

Climate Change

and Climate Treaties:

The Context for Deliberation

Introduction

Over twenty people were gathered together at a conference center on the shore of Lake Tahoe to get a grip on global climate change. A few volunteered to calculate our carbon footprints to see the scope of change we need to face. The carbon footprint calculator on a website constructed by a team associated with the University of California at Berkeley¹ provided our tool. We discovered that the average annual emission of carbon dioxide for Californians is thirty-four tons, compared to thirty-nine tons in the nation and eight worldwide. Climatologists tell us that we all need to get our footprints down to four or five tons per year if we are to prevent catastrophic effects of climate shifts. A no-regrets level will require an emission allowance of two tons per capita per year.

Some of the reporters calculated their footprints to be twenty-eight to forty-one tons, hovering around the state or national average. However, Margaret and her spouse walk, bike, and use public transportation when they can. Only rarely do they get in their hybrid auto and drive. They recycle paper, plastic, and glass. They buy almost all their clothing at thrift shops and catch cold water from the shower before it warms up to flush the toilet. They wash their laundry with cold water and shop at the farmers’ market for much of their grocery list. Despite their conscientious attention to conservation, their carbon footprint is eighteen tons of carbon dioxide per year, about half the national or California average, but still over quadruple what it needs to be.

Similarly, Richard and his spouse have solar panels on their roof that generate electricity during the day, which the utility company buys from them at about one-third the retail price. One of their vehicles is an electric car, and the other is a hybrid. The electric car’s battery is recharged, using a timer, between midnight and six in the morning, when the electric rates are lowest. Their home’s windows are double-paned for insulation. They have invested in energy conservation and renewable energy, but because they’ve incorporated a fair amount of air travel into their year, mostly for mission purposes, their footprint is not as low as their daily habits would lead one to anticipate, at twenty-five tons of carbon dioxide per year, five or six times what it needs to be.

I live on the campus of a seminary, so I do not need to drive to work. The faculty house I occupy is built to use natural air conditioning. Eating within a food-shed of three hundred miles is almost always feasible, and gardening lightens the load on the grocery store and makes a network of food sharing with the neighbors possible and fun. My carbon footprint is nineteen tons of carbon dioxide per year, four or five times what it needs to be.

We are conscientious, aware of our responsibility to be earth citizens, living in a temperate climate with few weather extremes, and—relative to much of the world—wealthy in resources to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions. And yet the structures that provide us with energy and transportation are manufactured in the Kingdom of Oil. As conscientious as we are, we will not be able to lower our carbon footprints to the necessary four or five tons until state and federal and international policies are crafted that encourage new practices that deliver energy and transportation without using fossil fuel. At this point in time, we are prisoners in the Kingdom of Oil. How can we spring free? Our hope is lodged in treaties.

Climate Change Protocol

A just-so combination of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other trace gases provides a natural greenhouse for planet Earth, preventing the sun’s heat from totally re-radiating back into space at nightfall. It keeps our planet about sixty degrees warmer than it otherwise would be, providing a mitigating effect on swings in atmospheric temperatures from hot to cold. Life as we know it on Earth depends on this greenhouse effect. When we humans began burning coal, oil, and natural gas in great quantities during industrialization, however, we introduced levels of CO2 in greater quantities and faster than the planet has seen for fifty million years.

The concentration of carbon dioxide has by no means been stable through the hundreds of thousands of years, according to Earth’s records written in tiny air bubbles trapped in an Antarctic ice core. The natural swings in levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have always correlated with temperature change. As CO2 increases, temperatures rise. Anthropogenic (human-induced) CO2 is similarly resulting in temperature increases. If nations continue along the current path, increasing emissions by 3.3 percent annually, CO2 concentrations will likely be more than 700 parts per million (ppm) by 2100.¹ That level would represent double the current level (about 385 ppm CO2 and, with the carbon equivalence of the other greenhouse gases, 430 ppm CO2 eq) and much more than double the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm CO2.² We would be looking at an increase of Earth’s surface temperature from 2.7 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.³ We might refer to this phenomenon as global warming, except that the effects may not be experienced as warming in every location. If the polar caps melt and release fresh water into the Atlantic, the trajectory of the Gulf Stream will be affected, and the British Isles will lose its warming effect in the winter. Thus, the concern is better stated to be that of climate change.

Because different regions will be affected in different ways, motivation to curtail the burning of fossil fuels is mixed. Russia has large areas in permafrost that would become suitable for agriculture as a result of climate change. Russia also has large fossil fuel reserves, the sale of which would benefit its foreign exchange. Motivation to curtail use of fossil fuels is low. Similarly, the OPEC nations (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) export petroleum and natural gas. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait control one-third of the oil reserves of the OPEC nations, and oil accounts for their foreign earnings. So the world may not see cooperation from OPEC nations in the effort to decrease the use of fossil fuels. Similarly, the United States, by far the largest emitter of CO2, is the world’s largest producer of coal, oil, and gas, even though it is a net importer of energy products. Energy producers thus view efforts to decrease the use of fossil fuels as a threat. Yet the United States has a long coastline that will be affected as the sea level rises, and parts of the country experience hurricanes and other flooding, drought, and tornadoes, all of which will increase in intensity with increases in average temperatures, as the global water cycle speeds up. A sizable portion of the population in the United States is alarmed by the prospects of climate change, and this represents a pressure different from that offered by the energy producers.

On the other hand, the forty-two developing countries bound together in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) face an extreme impact from rising sea levels. Their land masses are low-lying, so that when cyclones hit, there is no place to escape. If average temperatures rise four to eight degrees in this century, the ocean level will rise at least eighteen to nineteen inches, as more glaciers and snow masses on land melt away. The island nations’ survival is therefore at stake, and their representatives typically take strong stands, asking industrialized nations to decrease fossil fuel use. Along with the island nations, the European Union has played a leading role in promoting decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. While some nations within the EU are producers of oil and gas, only about half of the EU’s energy needs are met domestically. Thus, these nations generally have interests in decreasing fossil fuel consumption. By virtue of their relatively successful history of private/government/environmental collaboration in reducing effluents, the EU provides strong leadership among industrialized nations in showing how such decreases can be achieved.⁴

Even among the mix of motivations of nations’ leaders regarding the prospect of climate change, there has been enough consensus that the rate of change threatens the climate’s balancing capacity. At the current speed of warming, trees and other flora will not have the time to migrate successfully, leading to faster loss of species. Poor air quality and the diseases that thrive in warmer climates will adversely affect human health. Beaches, populated islands, and wetlands will be inundated. A twenty-inch rise in sea level will double the global population at risk from storm surges, from about forty-five million at present to over ninety million. Droughts and floods will increase in intensity. Water supply problems in arid and semi-arid regions will be exacerbated.⁵ The basis for international cooperation to lower emissions is sufficiently established to provide the impetus for some covenants and treaties. The most developed of these treaties is the Kyoto Protocol, governing emissions from 2008 to 2012, and the treaty that will follow after 2012 is at this writing being negotiated for the Copenhagen Climate Conference of December 2009. Each treaty and covenant takes into consideration what has been accomplished in prior agreements and what has succeeded or failed. In that sense the treaty process is iterative.

While the Kyoto Treaty is not the first—nor will it be the last—treaty governing international climate change policies, it is the focus of this book for two reasons. While the United States is an important neighbor in the world community, the U.S. negotiators backed out of the Kyoto Treaty because of the large impact of U.S. business and development on the climate. U.S. citizens who see themselves as earth citizens also were dismayed and ashamed by the actions of the government. Second, the issues that emerged in the Kyoto process and following are not going away. The same processes that created the need for climate treaties continue to be consequential for the earth’s climate, and the mechanisms that were created in the Kyoto process have yet to be fully implemented and assessed. At this writing it is still not clear whether or how the U.S. legislative processes will empower U.S. negotiators to be good citizens. So, while the Kyoto Treaty is for a limited time frame, the policies contained within it will continue to generate moral concern for treaties to come.

The Kyoto Protocol was unanimously adopted in Kyoto, Japan, December 11, 1997, by 170 industrialized, industrializing, and nonindustrialized nations. Although the treaty provided some general directions governing the quantity of emissions to decrease and the mechanisms by which such reductions could take place, it left to future meetings the specifics of implementation. Many parties to the treaty waited for the decisions about specifics to ratify the treaty through their respective parliamentary procedures. Fifty-five ratifications were required before the treaty took effect. Even though the U.S. government, during George W. Bush’s administration, withdrew from the treaty in March, 2001, the treaty nevertheless had sufficient signatories governing sufficient emissions to enter into force on February 16, 2005.⁶ As of February 2007, 168 states and the European Economic Community have ratified the Protocol.⁷ The rules